Best Horror Movie

If you were to read a synopsis for The Conjuring, you would probably think the film sounded overly familiar and quite stale. A family dealing with a haunted house. Based on a true story. Paranormal investigators who come to help. But thanks to some masterful direction by James Wan, The Conjuring stands out from the poltergeist pack. Despite having a fairly standard haunted-house horror plot, The Conjuring is a fun, scary and beautiful looking movie. In The Conjuring, Wan uses skills learnt directing his previous films and old-school 70s horror tricks to amp up the tension and ensure a sleepless night. We may have seen these scare setpieces before (e.g. the possessed doll, the dark cellar, the crows flying into the house) and we know how music manipulates us to create jumps, but The Conjuring pulls these off in such a way that the film feels both fresh and terrifying.